Thinking. Stuff. Head churning with it. Mommybrain still, but maybe some of the grey matter is coming back. Just as well I’ve a job lined up, becuase otherwise I’d go and buy a house or something just to have a reason to make more lists. You’d think a trip to Europe in July was enough planning to keep me going.

Here’s my rationale. We’ve been here nearly three years already, with no end in sight and a more “permanent” job coming up. I don’t want to suddenly turn around and find we’ve been here another three years and kept sinking money into rent when we could have bought a place. I don’t want to discover we’re in the wrong school district in two years’ time when Monkey is ready for kindergarden. At the bottom of it, I suppose I’m just sick of living in this seat-of-our-pants, temporary style.

We could take a portion of the money we have at home squirreled away for buying a house that hypothetical day when we return to the promised land of our forefathers, and spend it on a 3-bed here, now, where we actually live – up the road, in the other school district and in walking distance of handy stuff. Nothing huge, just enough space for the two kids we now find ourselves with and maybe a few more places to put things. (An office area, wouldn’t that be fabulous? No more filing cabinets in the bedroom.)

It would be spreading our investment in case (heaven forefend) the bank at home went belly-up and the government didn’t have it all guaranteed after all. It would be investing in equity rather than just paying rent. It would be buying in a buyers’ market and therefore getting a good price. It would be tempting fate to suddenly send us a job at home, in which case we would sell or rent it out for a couple of years, whichever recouped our money best, and hightail it back to the land of our etcetera etcetera.
Mostly, this idea feels right to me. It quashes the antsy feeling I’ve been having. It makes me feel like we’d be moving forward in a sensible manner, not necessarily capitulating that we’ll live here forever, but just recognising that we might be here for a few years yet and it’s okay to put down a root or two. Just in case. Instead of stubbornly continuing to say “We want to go home” and living accordingly, when there’s no possibility of that in sight.

This last trip home convinced me more than any other in recent years, more than I’ve felt since we moved up from Texas, that I really want to be there. That Ireland feels right in a way that America doesn’t. That I want my kids to grow up where high fructose corn syrup is not in every (second) thing they eat and where they can be snarkily dismissive of the Paddy’s Day shenanigans. Where the rugby is important. And maybe, conversly, that’s all exactly why I’m starting to feel like we have to buy a house here, on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Something needs to happen.